Get your
n sio illu right leh!
Singaporee Art
Museum
Introduction
of Singapore Art Museum
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The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) advocates and presents contemporary art practices of Singapore and the Southeast Asian region. Opened in January 1996 as a museum under the National Heritage Board of Singapore, SAM has amassed one of the world’s largest public collections of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian artworks, with a growing component in international contemporary art. Through strategic alliances with international arts and cultural institutions, SAM facilitates visual arts education, exchange, research and development within the region and internationally. The museum has forged partnerships with institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Seoul National University Museum of Art, Stedelijk Museum, Bonn Art Museum, Centre of International Modern Art, National Museum of India, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Asia Society in New York, Fukuoka Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery. With Singapore becoming a global city for the arts, SAM’s international networks bring about a confluence of ideas, and create a dynamic arts scene invigorated by international flows of ideas, talents, knowledge and resources.
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SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2013
Artworks
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Guess what is the meaning behind this installation?
just random scatters of polaroids flower baths of hope and renewal pictures of the lost memories
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flower
Baths
of hopes and renewal
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Did you get it correct? If you did, good for you! If you didn’t, just giggle because life is all about making mistakes. The purpose behind this piece of work is to gather everyone’s sense of hope and portray it in a pool of polaroids and flowers. The deep meaning is created by Sharon Chin, Kuala Lumpur
Flower bath of hope and renewal
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flower
Baths of hopes and renewal
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In the mandi bunga (Malay for “flower bath�), one bathes in water infused with fragrant flowers such as roses, orchids, frangipanis, jasmine and ylangylang. Depending on the circumstances, this may be done during a full moon, while reciting mantras or with water obtained from specific rivers, wells or streams. For this work, Chin engaged about 100 people to revisit the tradition. At workshop sessions with the artists, they designed and fabricated yellow costumes adorned with flowers (such as the on Chin wore at a rally in Kuala Lumpur in April 2012), to be worn in a mass flower bath at the Biennale. Relics and documentation from this event were then collated and installed. The artist and participants are thus conjoined in an orchestration of hope and renewal
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What is the purpose of this spammage of post-its?
resolutions to change the world renting your inner anger just to decorate the room
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resolutions
to change the world
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Did you get it correct? If you did, good for you! If you didn’t, just giggle because life is all about making mistakes. Isn’t it beautiful to see minds of unfamiliar people pasting postits of their resolutions to change the world? I guess when people come together to exchange their resolutions, it creates a “rainbow” of hope. A hope for the future.
Resolutions to change the world
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resolutions
to change the world If the world changed.... Can you complete the sentence? Well this is indeed the purpose of this huge installation in Singapore Art Museum. What this installation aims to achieve is to gather as many resolutions to a possibility of a world change. It’s amazing how a simple sentence, “If the world changed...” could receive such a spontaneous response from the general public. I still remember the feeling I had when I first entered the room of post-it. My mouth was left hanging and I was practically dumb-founded. The level of excitement creates such an impact that I just couldn’t stop taking pictures of every single corners of the installation.
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Guess what are these?
Skittles Buttons Saga Seeds
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4,000
Saga seeds around the world
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Did you get it correct? If you did, good for you! If you didn’t, just giggle because life is all about making mistakes. 4,000 Saga seeds all over the world? This is insane! I wonder how patient the person is! Apparantly, its Kumari Nahappan. Kiang, Malaysia
Saga Seeds
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4,000
Saga seeds around the world Comprising more than 4,000 kg of saga seeds collected from across Southeast Asia, Anahata is a site-specific installation located in the heart of the Singapore Art Museum. In Hindu cosmology, the word refers to the fourth and “heart” chakra, meaning “unstrucked” or “unhurt”. The idea of change is expressed here not as an active force or physical manifestation, which holds the lifeforce of an entire tree in its tiny kernel. The work recalls the history of the site as a former Catholic boys’ school, a place where knowledge and learning were planted. Pulsing with the energy of thousands of seeds, Anahata intimate that the greatest power is that of pure possibility.
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What is the meaning of this series of pictures?
The metamorphosis of Human Plain serenity What’s in your mind
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Metamorphosis
Of humans the inevitable change
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Did you get it correct? If you did, good for you! If you didn’t, just giggle because life is all about making mistakes. That’s right, Change is inevitable in every living being. Even right now, we are changing at a really slow rate. However as time passes, we would eventually see the changes. No one would stay the same forever and ever. Art work done by Sean Lee, SG.
The metamorphosis of
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Metamorphosis
Of humans the inevitable change Sean Lee confronts mortality with this reimagining of the Resurrection, a tale in which the aged bodies of his parents go through a metamorphosis. In an early garden, a man sow seeds into the ground. After a season of rain, each seed transfors into a living plant. It flowers and bear fruit. Similarly, Lee sees the burial of the dead as an act of sowing, from which another life occcus. These delicate black and white images are taken of the bodies of his parents. Captured as close-ups in an abstract way, their anatomies become unrecognisable. One sees the perishable flesh as stars in the night, the moon, the earth and the seasons of times that goes on and on.
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HOLD ON THERE ARE OTHER varieties in the Singapore Art Museum
In Singapore Art Museum, you are able to get expose to different art and film medias all across Asia. From delicate crafted works to horrorinstiling installations, there’s so many varieties you can get into contact with and I’m literally saying “get into contact” with it. You can literally touch some of the Art installations in the museum. Say goodbye to “No touching” in museums! As you walk further, you would realised the works are actually linked to a certain theme called, “If the world changed...” That is certainly the theme for SIngapore Biennale 2013!
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Author’s note
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Walking around Singapore Art Museum definitely brought peace and serenity into my mind as the works provoke an inner thought in me.., “If the world change...”. It made me realised a piece of art can have such an impactful message to it. How I wish I have a rich vocabulary of descriptive words to describe how awesome Singapore Art Museum is. I guess its up to you to experience the “museum” feeling by visiting it yourself!
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